If this is October, it must be mushroom season!
Trail sides are displaying a wide range of shapes, colours and textures of all things fungal. The challenge for you is to see how many different kinds you can find without, not even once, asking aloud, “Can I eat it?”
What is it about mushrooms that the edibility question always comes popping out? If I was to point out a white-crowned sparrow on a low branch, do you immediately ask if you can eat it? If you find a particularly interesting fallen leaf, do ponder its quality of taste?
Let’s agree to wander away from the culinary question of mushrooms and take a more overall view of the subject.
One question you may indeed ask: is a mushroom different than a fungus? Or perhaps are toadstools in a whole different class? How do you tell one from the other?
To clarify, all mushrooms and toadstools are a type of fungus. And the terms ‘mushroom’ and ‘toadstool’ are just common ways of referring to the reproductive portion of a mycorrizal hyphae. Are we clear now?
A bunch of funguses are called fungi, and that can be pronounced as “fun guy” or “fun-gee”. (It’s like tomato – tomato, pileated – pileated… hmm, that does not work nearly as well in written form as when pronounced out loud with an English accent). For an indirect, all-encompassing mention, you may use the term “fun gal.”
Before I get into some ways to tell one fungus from another, may I offer a brief overview of their interesting world. First up, they are not plants, as fungi do not have roots, flowers, chlorophyll, seeds, nor leaves; they are in Kingdom quite separate from the usual botanical specimens we see growing all around us.
Although not within the world of botany, they have a huge impact on many of our local trees, wildflowers, and garden crops. This relationship happens in the soil, where plant roots are seeking moisture and nutrients. The ‘roots’ of fungi are actually called mycelium, and mycelium is constantly growing outwards, with each section (called a hyphae) reproducing by dividing into two while absorbing micro-nutrients from the soil.
When a plant root and a strand of mycelia bump into each other, a mutual understanding is reached: the fungus transfers nutrients into the soft root tip, and the plant provides sugars from its sap back to the fungus. Everybody wins!
If your garden or lawn is weak and not performing well, there is probably a lack of soil fungi. Conversely, if your lawn is sporting several mushrooms, rejoice, as that means your soil is rich with fungal matter (and that’s a good thing).
A mushroom is created when a leading branch of hypha decides it’s time to reproduce ... so rather than continuing to grow laterally, it bends and goes up to the surface. Once up in the fresh air, a fruiting body is formed (a thing we tend to call a “mushroom”) and reproductive spores are released into the air.
Trying to differentiate one mushroom from another is both easy and hard. Easy to group it into one growth form or another, then hard to figure out what the individuals are within that group.
The first two groups include the typical umbrella-shaped fruiting cap. To split these apart, look underneath the cap… is it gilled or spongy? If it looks like gills or curtains, you now have only several thousand options to pursue; if it is sponge-like you have narrowed it down to being one of the Boletes, of which there are only hundreds. See, you are on your way to being a mycologist already!
If it is not the typical umbrella cap, is it upright like a piece of coral? Or perhaps is showing as a jelly-like blob on a tree trunk? And speaking of tree trunks, is your discovery growing like a shelf from the side of the tree? Is it on a hardwood or conifer tree? Live tree or dead one? The growing substrate often helps to determine the fugal species.
Some of the shelf fungi have long teeth under the cap while others may have intricate patterns like a labyrinth. Or have you found a blob that looks a bit like a closed umbrella on a stick?
I gloss over the above not to scare you away from having fun with mushroom identifications, but to show the challenges in nailing down a specific name. You may also have to determine if the stalk is solid or hollow; is the cap dry or slimy; is there a bulb at the base of the stalk or not?
So, rather than getting hung up on identifications, I suggest you enjoy your fall walk by looking for the abundance and diversity of fungi. How many red ones? Orange ones? Brown ones? You can even make up your own names if you like… marshmallow brown, buckskin tan, big frilly umbrella versus small frilly umbrella.
October is really the optimal time of year for fungal research, so enjoy your walk and let the majesty and magic of nature spur you on to new discoveries.